Obedience Without Command: The Silent Authority of Predictive Systems

This article investigates the paradox of obedience without command in predictive societies. Authority, once tied to explicit orders and visible command structures, is now embedded in syntactic operations that organize compliance without issuing instructions. Obedience Without Command explores how predictive systems generate silent authority, where rules are followed not because they are commanded, but because their form leaves no alternative. Through case studies of financial reporting, automated governance, and predictive scoring, the paper develops a framework to understand authority that operates without decision-makers, and obedience that emerges without command. DOI Primary archive: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16993991 Secondary archive: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30010129